Stable/dev branches or should we provide pre-compiled binaries?

[KLS]

Newer maps are significantly smaller, also you could have it generate new maps from an eq install then copy them over (takes about 5 minutes for me).

[Scorpious2k]

Originally Posted by vsab

My aim is to have the simplest install ever for someone who has discovered this site and wants to get a working server running with the smallest amount of hassle.

I really like this idea.

But the installer I'm writing would:-

1. Download and install ActivePerl-5.16.3-x86, if needed
2. Download and install MariaDb, if needed

WOW! I thought I was the only one using MariaDB - well, me and Google now that they switched. :P

3. Download and install Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013, if needed
4. Download and install a precompiled EQ Emu binary set. I could actually use yours and just unzip it but I already have an installer, which sets up the folder structure
5. Install maps and quests in the correct location, plugins in the correct locations
6. Set up Maria DB correctly with a default password (probably "password" :P )

The default always seems to be (in guides) DB name eqemu and password eqemu. If you wanted to get clever you could grab the computer name (system variable COMPUTERNAME) or the current user name (system variable USERNAME) as a password making it unique to each installation, easy for the user to remember, and still a pretty crappy password otherwise.

7. Install the PEQ database

You could also supply them with a startup batch file too. If you do, be aware there is a program called timeout.exe that is FAR better than using ping for delays and it is included with windows.

If I get that working I might make another package to install Apache, the PEQ PHP editor and HeidiSQL. Or maybe a package to install the plugins/mods that Akka has published.

Great!

[joligario]

Temporary stop-gap posted until you come up with final solution.

https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/wiki/EQEmu-Binaries

[vsab]

Been a bit busy, there is a bug in one of the dependencies (MariaDb in fact)- so I may have to make my own installer, but I'm up to step 5 pretty much. One night this week I will get the rest sorted.

It will never handle an upgrade situation (too many things can change), and I need to do some checks in regards to how it installs on a non clean machine (using pristine VM's for testing).

I was going to supply two configs and two startup files - using the public login server and using a local one.

I'll think about changing the password, I was probably going to just insert the computer name as the server name in the config. Generally speaking, the fewer variables between each install the better in terms of us supporting it.

[vsab]

Note on progress:- none. This is because of RL issues for me, but even if I did work on it the codebase is in such a transitional state it would be hard to get a stable snapshot, however I was at about 90% of the way when I stopped.